Naperville, IL is focusing its efforts on bringing in the right people, establishing the right priorities, setting up the right technology, and documenting the right processes to lay the foundation for a future rooted in innovation.
Before a city gets to the shiny innovation projects, there are some major foundational pieces it needs to have in place. Now, these aren’t always sexy. They aren’t always even visible. But they’re critical for any city looking to establish long term sustainability, resilience and a culture of innovation. In this episode, Russell Rogers from Naperville, IL discusses how his city is going back to basics and laying the foundation for a future rooted in innovation. Read more...
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Featured government: Naperville, IL
Episode guests: Russell Rogers, IT Project Manager
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
Lindsay (00:05):
Welcome to the Govlaunch Podcast. Govlaunch is the wiki for local government innovation and on this podcast we’re sharing the stories of local government innovators and their efforts to build smarter governments. I’m Lindsay Pica-Alfano, co-founder of Govlaunch and your host.
We’ve talked a lot on this podcast about local governments who are pushing the boundaries when it comes to innovation. In Darwin they used smart lighting to drive efficiency and placemaking, in Edmonton, AI helps streamline the safety code inspections. Innisfil, Ontario even turned its small town into a startup accelerator to spark economic development.
But before a city gets to the shiny innovation projects, there are some major foundational pieces it needs to have in place. Now, these aren’t always sexy. They aren’t always even visible. But they’re critical for any city looking to establish long term sustainability, resilience and a culture of innovation. In this episode, I’m talking with Russell Rogers from Naperville, IL about how his city is going back to basics and laying the foundation for a future rooted in innovation. Let’s hear what’s going on in Naperville...
Russell, thanks so much for joining us today. Tell us a bit about your role.
Russell (01:19):
My role is IT project manager at the city of Naperville, and that can mean a lot of different things for me with my role is that I lead a team of two business systems analysts.
Lindsay (01:32):
So you all are in the process of an incredibly important reimagination of the IT and organizational foundation in Naperville. I know these efforts typically have a lot of different components, you know, from hiring the right people to establishing new priorities. I want to start with the people. Naperville’s IT department has brought on a number of new team members over the past few years. Can you tell me what one or two characteristics are that you've looked for when building out the team?
Russell (2:00):
If I'm to say skills and I would be looking for, and I know other managers here at are looking for are people that have a diverse background. People that have changed roles have interacted with the users. We can't afford with being a small IT shop to have your old, traditional back office IT person where they're just focusing on coding or supporting something, every single person within IT has some type of interaction with the users across the city. Some people might have it more frequently or might be facilitating others may not, or we need to have friendly people as members of the IT department. I need to be great at communicating and be part of a team. And that's part of our hiring process as well involving the team members in some of the selection of people that we want to interview, just to see if they're a match on paper, but then bring them in. And, you know, it's a two way evaluation. That candidate is looking to see, is this organization good fit for me? What I believe in the cultural environment, I want to work within. And then the team, and that's where bringing in those team members to be part of the decision making process is powerful.
Lindsay (03:25):
Well, I think you hit the nail on the head when you talk about diverse backgrounds and the ability to be flexible. Local government can no longer be viewed as this stale position where you see local governments now - you have to be very nimble, especially in the wake of this crisis. Having a staff that is able to move quickly and be flexible, especially in difficult times is probably one of the most important things. And then interesting bringing in the team to be part of the interview and vetting process. That's a no brainer, right? That you're going to have people that are more engaged and excited to be part of the team when they were part of the decision making process. So people are obviously a huge component. Let's talk about priorities. How have you redefined your focus areas?
Russell (04:14):
Yeah, when we had a change in leadership within the IT department, the new leader came in and trying to make sense of it for herself, but for the rest of the team and the leadership across the city, you create something, you create your one page how do I tell my story of what's going on within the department. And that was broken down into four key areas, security focusing on our perimeter, doing the continual testing, coming up with an incident management playbook. That's something that we never had before and getting IT to talk to the business about business continuity and what applications would be important to them if something were to happen. If we were to lose our links to the outside world, how do we conduct business? How do we make that user experience where we'll call customers a resident or business owner coming into the city, how do we make that the best possible experience despite not having that technology?
Infrastructure is another pillar there. And that is what you would think it would be. Focusing on our back office upgrades, our data center, moving things back on prem that we had moved to the cloud, updating our databases, our strategic applications that are used, especially GIS, our wireless network.
Customer support is a third one. Once again, talking about the user experience, setting those expectations, communicating those expectations and SLAs.
And then finally our technology solutions. So that's where you get into the major projects that we have the prioritization of the intake of those projects. And then when we're talking about change, looking at the impact of that change, how deep does that go by establishing some form of enterprise architecture and the application portfolio around that. So those are our four main pillars.
Lindsay (06:22):
Great. And I want to take a slight segue. We brought up an interesting point and about moving some, um, some of your infrastructure back on premise that you had previously moved to the cloud. That's a little interesting because we hear so many local governments are trying to move toward getting more and more onto the cloud. You know, some are still terrified of the cloud and are afraid to put anything there, but there are definitely some benefits, which I know that you realize. But you all maybe have a bit of a cautionary tale before going all in. What is a piece of advice that you would give to somebody in your shoes that's either considering moving more to the cloud or potentially has already moved to the cloud and is maybe regretting that decision to go all in? Do you have a piece of advice for those folks?
Russell (07:09):
Yes, I do. And it's nothing that other people have not heard. And that is to start small, don't go all in with your cards and put all your chips in the pot on moving to the cloud. Don't that cloud first, only looking at the cloud is a solution to everything. Now for some organizations that might work for us, it didn't. And we realized that, and we're now making that course correction. We were reading the environment, seeing the cost going up and our spend. So, you know, in combination with the cost being unpredictable, because we didn't have the tools to measure how much our spend was going to be on a monthly basis. And then getting that charge at the true uptime and being shocked. And then also the idea of not having as much control. So when you put things in the cloud, you lose some of that control and we wanted to bring back some of that and have that flexibility. Combination of those two things were a driver and then also performance going out to the cloud and then bringing that back, especially large files being used by our engineers, working with drawings and other files, that wasn't creating the user experience that we wanted. People want things to be instantaneous. We're used to that in our life as a consumer of technology outside of the workplace. Why does the workplace have to not live up to the same standard? And that was another reason for bringing that back on prem. So in summary start small and continue to assess where you're at and then move forward.
Lindsay (08:59):
Yeah, that's a great, great piece of advice. And I appreciate you letting her, letting us go off track a little bit there. A big piece of this type of modernization you guys are going through, of course, is technology itself. Can you share an example or two of some of the systems you're upgrading or migrating and why?
Russell (09:16):
Sure. The biggest one that has had the biggest impact across the entire city, almost every single department is impacted by it somehow is our ERP. Our old director would joke that our AS400 ERP they didn't know what the internet was, they didn’t connect to the internet. So now we're in the process of migrating. Another one is bringing everyone onto the same work order and asset management system. In the past every department seemed to be purchasing technology in their own silo. IT may get involved at the very end once the purchase has gone through and say, implement this. And I'm sure other people will be hearing this will have that same type of story. And we're now trying to right that wrong and change the conversation around where IT and the business come together beforehand and talk about things and try and fit a problem to a solution that we already have a tool that we have in existence before going out to get another one.
And when these different changes, it's tremendous, we’re not only talking about changing our technology, we're talking about changing people's jobs and how they view their work and skill sets that they need, processes, new integrations across applications, and thinking about the workplace in a completely different manner than we ever expected. And some of that is changing on a monthly basis as we learn more, maybe it's about the capability of an application and knowing that we can make a tie in. And if it is reasonable to go ahead and try doing that. So there's a lot of stress we're putting on not only the employees, but also the IT folks to make this all come together and work. And those are probably the two biggest ones to strategic changes taking place at the city. The idea of change fatigue is a reality, and that's something that we're hearing from the users in various forms. And we need to continue to listen to that and talk about it. We can't hide from it.
Lindsay (11:42):
Yeah. And especially with the folks that are all transitioned to working from home, that was a really big change for most so treading lightly there, but also not taking it as a time to rest on our laurels, right? We had talked last time. You have applications that you all are using across the different departments and getting a good handle on that and, and determining where potentially there's some overlap and you can trim some fat. How do we leverage existing tools versus going out and trying to buy another one? There's a lot of really neat companies out there that are either pivoting or looking at the current landscape and saying, we have a great opportunity here to be adding additional functionality to the platform. I have a lot of exposure with those companies and I will say that they don't do a great job a lot of times letting their clients know or their prospective customers know the breadth of the resources they have on their platform. So there could be some missed opportunities there as well. So I think the job of going through and doing a triage of these applications, we've talked about it at Govlaunch in the context, a lot around open data, and you have to understand what data you're collecting through all of these applications, before you can ever talk about having any kind of an open data platform. Many of the changes you're making, aren't going to be visible, at least not for some time. There are a lot of behind the scenes type work that's going on. How does your team communicate the value of this work to others within your local government?
Russell (13:18):
It depends on the individual and whether captive audiences, our IT director is doing that type of sharing and communicating what the other leaders of the various departments across the city and the city manager, the deputy city manager and their meetings. We have a technology steering committee that is made up of representatives from most every single department. And they are our advocates. They are the voices of the different users, different departments, and they are great members to help spread the word. They then go back by us sharing and those meetings, they go back and they can translate it into terms that make sense to their appropriate business. And in those meetings, we also get that feedback. So we get that complete loop in those meetings, and that's another way of hearing and letting it be known, what the value is of all these different changes, the why behind it. Let's kind of take that opportunity to ask some more questions and kind of humanize the work that we're doing in some cases.
Lindsay (14:34):
And so that's great. That's how you're keeping everybody within the local government apprised. Obviously internal buy in is extremely important and rallying your people around different initiatives. But what about your residents? How can a city like yours and potentially some advice for some other cities, How can a city going through this behind the scenes transformation convey this important work to the rest of the community?
Russell (15:01):
That's a great question. What I would say is the way that Naperville is approaching it today. And I say today because I imagine this is going to change over time is through the service levels, that experience again, is that resident or business getting what they want when they approach the city. Whenever they're engaging with the city, that transaction, is it faster than it was before? Is it the same or is it less? So it's indirect. It's not us going out and saying, we're moving things from the cloud back to on prem. How many people are going to understand that, how can we connect that back to them in terms that makes sense? And for us to answer. So what, when they say that, what does that mean to me? To me, the way we could tell that is by our service levels and the quality of service that we provide to our residents.
On the other hand, if we are going to go out and do sharing, is that we have a lot of our procurements within our agenda management system. That's something our procurement team wanted to do. That was a combination of them and the city leaders just saying let's put this out there, let's rewrite how we approach the approvals, let's put it into terms that can be understood by anybody. They don't need to have an IT background to make sense of what is being procured.
Lindsay (16:37):
What's one piece of advice you would give other small to medium sized, local governments who are going through a similar transformation type process within their local government to position them better for future innovation?
Russell (17:05):
One thing I would say is to remember that technology improvements bring change to the users and the customers, and that a lot of times when you're solving one problem, you're creating another problem and then solving your problem you're raising questions that may never have come up before that need to be answered, and that you need to address those. You need to listen to the users, to what they're saying. You need to give them a voice and to have compassion. People by nature, all of us, do not like change. I think you might find people that do like change working in IT cause things are changing so fast and we're more accustomed to it, but we're always more often than not, not the ones using the software that we're implementing or on the, we're not the ones impacted. We're the ones pushing the user where we're not being pulled a lot of the time. And so that's something that we sometimes lose out on is putting ourselves in the shoes of the user and what they're going through, so that they'd be more empathetic towards the user community. And lastly, be patient change does not happen overnight.
Lindsay (18:06):
Well. And I think that the important thing you bring up, you’ve talked about implementing new software. But earlier on we, I believe we talked about some process improvements as well. I think a lot of folks are too quick to jump to, Hey, there's a piece of technology that can help solve this problem. And like you said, it's probably gonna come up with more problems than potentially it’s solving for. I was having a conversation with somebody last week about the importance of creating a culture within local government where roles can be a little bit more fluid because I think in this ever changing environment where technology is getting better and better, this can be very threatening, to people's job security. So you're going to have a more successful transformation if you will, toward this culture of innovation, if your employees don't feel threatened by technology and feel that their skillset can be used in a breadth of areas across local government. So I think that's a lot of leadership and communication and just a hard look at internal processes too. Changing gears a little, I'd like to ask just a few more general questions if you're game.
Russell:
Let's do it.
Lindsay (19:19): We love talking about failure on Govlaunch because we think failure is a springboard to innovation. So if you'd be agreeable to sharing some failure, would you share with us something you've tried that potentially didn't work?
Russell (19:32):
Yes. And I like how people frame it is not fail fast, learn fast. You learn from your failures. People think that a lot of times when I've learned things, it's from making mistakes, I make mistakes every day. I'm sure my team and my wife would both agree with that. But yeah, with moving to teleworking, I immediately started to have daily stand up meetings Monday through Friday, same time with my team for several months. And it was only after that time that I realized that one of the members of my team said that that was creating a level of mistrust, that they were starting to not be as creative or maybe take as many risks because they viewed that as me checking in. And that was something I never would have thought or considered was how they felt or thought about that. We hear people moving to be more agile and doing stand up meetings and to the point where it almost becomes common where it's not even thought about to think about how people might feel about that. And in retrospect, my approach would have been different to it as well. I could have talked to my team and said, Hey, we're now working remote. Let's try this. Instead of just plopping it on the calendar and saying, by just my actions alone, this is the new way we're working. This is the new way we're going to engage instead of approaching them and telling them, this is the purpose behind it. We can make adjustments as we go along. And since learning that, we now are meeting three times a week, same time, same type of format. And that seems to be working. I'm getting what I want out of it. They're getting something out of it as well. So that is one thing. If you're going to try something out to let people know what you're trying to do and get their buy in, instead of just trying it out, something as simple, even as a standup meeting is one example of where I made some course correction.
Lindsay (21:54):
I know a lot of people are trying this now in current times, it's seen as more necessary, but I can see that response, uh, although I wouldn't expect it either, I'm not necessarily surprised to hear it. Can you share with us one or two products you'd strongly recommend and why?
Russell (22:12):
With the products that I would recommend, it goes back to working with solid vendors, vendors that get your situation, get your story, and are responsive. For me with the vendors that I'm working with. Tromba is a online calendaring tool. And that is one that we started using on the city's website. And it has now grown to be used in several different departments, with a plugin to SharePoint. We have multiple calendars used by different departments and they're able to put their events in there. People can do their registering for them, get email response, add it to their own outlook calendar. And when we call them up and we need help, they're right there. It's one of those things where we talk about amongst ourselves, my team, and say, it'd be great if we had more vendors like this that we worked with from both one. And I would say another one that stands out is BrainStorm's QuickHelp. It's a learning platform that focuses on office 365 and Microsoft products. I'm a firm believer in the reason behind the product. We used it almost extensively when we did go to office 365, several years ago for training. And I know it's not a good fit for everybody. Not everyone likes small chunks of videos to watch, but I am kind of biased. I am a believer in that learning platform and they are continuing to do more and focusing on productivity of an individual. I myself have been using these schools for years and I'm still learning new things, watching some of their videos. And then finally a ValueBlue who makes BlueDolphin. And that's the tool we're using for enterprise architecture and they've been fabulous. We've gone from not knowing anything about enterprise architecture, not knowing anything about keeping a good inventory of our applications, having it in multiple spreadsheets to now getting it into a tool and then doing some reaching out to say, Hey, how are you coming along instead of us making that call out to them saying we need help.
Lindsay (24:53):
Last question, what's something that excites you about the future of Naperville?
Russell (24:56):
I'm most excited in the fact for the first time in years is that we'll be fully staffed. Everyone is doing great work. And a lot of it is not seeing we're in the trenches right now. And for people to be able to close out some of these efforts, it's going to be a great win for them. You forget to be creative to keep that open mindset that I don't know anything and everything is new type mindset. And that's something is hard to maintain over years of being at a organization. They have these new team members come in, ask questions and be curious. It also helps you to remain curious yourself each time I've been in a meeting over the last couple of weeks and hearing different team members speak, I'm walking away, learning something from them and wanting to get better myself. So it's a great time to be in IT at the city of Naperville.
Lindsay (25:59):
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining me today. This has been really fun. It was a little bit of a different approach that we've taken in previous episodes where we focus on a specific project and dive into that a little bit more. But I think the message here is really important and potentially more relevant to a larger group of local governments who are looking at the same thing. How do we become a quote “smart city”? We need to do some foundational work before we can get there. Um, and you teach us a lot about the importance of building a strong team. It can be a small team, but having a strong team with a diverse skillset is important. Um, and then really taking a hard look at your existing applications and your existing processes, and constantly trying to improve to get better. But getting a handle on asset management, figuring out how you want your cloud infrastructure. All of these are, less flashy type, uh, innovations, but we're going to, we're going to call it innovation. because we think all of this is really important and it's an important foundation to get you where you need to be at Naperville. So thanks so much for joining me today, Russell.
Russell: You’re welcome. It's been a pleasure.
Lindsay (27:14):
From asset management and IT infrastructure to building the right team, we can see the complexity and establishing these core foundations to innovate and really to run any effective organization. It does start with getting your house in order. What I hope we all learned from this is that it takes the right leadership, the right team, and a drive to constantly make government work better. But that these foundational pieces, although difficult, are achievable in governments of all sizes.
If you need some guidance or looking for ways to connect with the resources and tools to address these challenges, you can check out Govlaunch. Thanks again to Russell Rogers for sharing the work underway in Naperville.
I'm Lindsay Pica-Alfano, and this podcast was produced by Govlaunch, the wiki for local government innovation. You can subscribe to hear more stories like this, wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a local government innovator, we hope you'll help us on our mission to build the largest free resource for local governments globally. You can join to search and contribute to the wiki at govlaunch.com. Thanks for tuning in. We hope to see you next time on the Govlaunch podcast.